Friday

Julia Child’s biography also may have inspired last night’s dinner. In the autumnal weather a couple of days ago, I had bought a chicken with thoughts of roasting or poaching it. But yesterday, summer weather kicked in, more in the realm of humidity than heat, but it was enough to not want the oven on.

Here is where I need to confess our adherence at Spy Headquarters to certain traditional gender roles. Although Mr. Spy is an able cook and likes to do it, I am generally the one on K.P. This is largely a matter of scheduling and may change at some point in the future should I be fortunate enough to find gainful employment outside the house. But for the moment, that’s the way things are. However, I have never, not once, attempted to use the grill. I decided I needed lessons. Mr. Spy showed me how to stuff the bottom of the charcoal chimney with newspaper, leaving a tail outside for lighting and then fill the upper chamber with briquettes. After some difficulties with the lighter, we managed to get it smoking and I went back inside to prep the meal.

I’ve never tried to cook a whole bird on the grill before. After some consultation with assorted recipes, and reading with fascination about the beer can method (open a can of beer and shove it up the backside of the chicken where the sun don’t shine and stand the can on top of the grill; the beer is supposed to keep the chicken moist and the can to work as a spit and allow the chicken to cook evenly and not too close to the heat), which we rejected only because we don’t drink our beer from cans and didn’t have any handy, I decided on spatchcocking. In the interest of avoiding raw chicken, I decided to spatchcock the bird. This is one of those things that, as a vegetarian for over twenty years, I never thought I’d find myself doing. But it’s my favorite way to cook chicken indoors too, because it halves the cooking time. Also, it is fun to say. Say it with me now: “spatchcock.” Don’t you feel a little dirty?

To spatchcock a chicken, you need a good pair of poultry shears. You turn the chicken breast-side down and cut along either side of the backbone to remove it. Then you flip the bird over, and flatten it open. You will hear a lot of cracking bones during the entire process, which is rather creepy. I tend to turn up the music really loud so it doesn’t freak me out. You can save the backbone for making stock, which I usually do, but I have a backlog in my freezer and it was too hot for the soup pot, so I tossed it this time.

I also sliced partway into the leg joints. This serves several purposes: to help speed the cooking process, to allow whatever marinade/rub to soak in there, and to make it easier to carve the chicken when you’re done. I mixed up a batch of my favorite chicken covering — a blend of garlic, mustard, herbes de province, olive oil and a dash of soy — and slathered it all over the chicken. Then I got to work on the vegetables. I discovered a mostly unused packet of bamboo skewers in the cabinet under the stove where we keep all the weird kitchen stuff (egg coddlers, hot chocolate pot, plastic popcorn holders that look like the paper boxes you get at the movies, a ridiculously large thermos that fits nowhere and is nearly impossible to lift when it’s full). I cut up red peppers into large chunks and shoved them onto the spears, alternating with whole baby portabello mushrooms (which we used to call crimini, but apparently that’s become démodé). I brushed them in olive oil, showered them with salt and pepper and went to check the grill. Not quite ready.

I decided that I also needed to make a Caesar salad. I love Caesar salad with the real Caesar croutons and dressing, but I can seldom be bothered to make it, because generally when I want salad, a large part of the inspiration is that it doesn’t require cooking. Caesar requires both oven (croutons) and stovetop (croutons and dressing), so not an everyday affair. I chopped up some bread for croutons and went back to check the grill. It was hot! Mr. Spy dumped the charcoals out, as much on one side of the grill as possible and replaced the grate. I rather gracelessly arranged the chicken on the charcoal-less side and covered the grill. That was easy.

I went back in the kitchen to work on the salad. I washed the lettuce and put it in a bowl. I flattened a clove of garlic and worked it into a pile of salt. I sauted the garlic and croutons. I coddled an egg, squeezed a lemon, dug the Worcestershire sauce out from the distant nether regions of the cupboard and made the dressing. Sadly, I was wanting for anchovies. Anchovies really do pull the dressing together. But we had none. Mr. Spy was probabably thinking it was just as well.

We ate on the porch and toasted our Friday meal with a nice glass of Prosecco. Afterwards, we played Scrabble. AJ got a little frustrated, but he still did extremely well. Mr. Spy, however, never loses.

Today Mr. Spy and I worked in the garden while AJ and The Boy Across the Street rode their bikes hither and yon and came back again and worked on skateboard tricks in the driveway. I planted four more window boxes of greens — one each of lettuce, spinach, arugula and chard. I transplanted some rudbeckia, pinched the yellowing leaves off the bottom of my tomatoes — can you believe I have not had to water them once this season? That’s how rainy it’s been — pruned five bushes and two small trees, hauled off an enormous pile of debris to the compost heap, and came inside and collapsed with an enormous glass of water.

Tonight Mr. Spy and I are going out. Mr. Spy’s extremely fastidious sister is coming to babysit, so we are in a cleaning frenzy. Best get back to work.

[second post today; click back for more].

The new 30

Here is the difference between youth and middle age:

Last night, Mr. Spy and I decided to watch a movie, specifically Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, which is a summertime tradition for us around here. Last summer, we had trouble finding it, since we are officially the last people in America not using Netflix. We are too cheap to pay for videos when public libraries have them for free, you see. And we didn’t get a hold of the film until September. But Mr. Spy came home triumphantly yesterday from a library we’d never been to before with a copy in hand.

Because we are no longer 20, at 10 p.m. we are getting ready to call it a night, not to go out dancing until 3 or smoking on the fire escape until 4, accompanied by our good friends Kraft Mac & Cheese and a six pack of beer (actually, that was me and my good friend J. I’m sure Mr. Spy would have omitted the Mac & Cheese part). So part one of the youth vs. middle age part is choosing pajamas over shoes and carbohydrates for watching a movie after 10 p.m.

So I’m in the bathroom getting ready for bed. I brushed my teeth first, which I do not usually do, but we’d made a fabulous but somewhat garlicky dinner (more on that later) and I felt the need to get right on it. Then I washed my face and put on my glasses. Except my glasses were outstandingly blurry. I took them off and squinted at them. They were filthy. I wiped the lenses off carefully with the bottom of my t-shirt and put them back on. Still blurry. I took them off again and squinted once more. Still dirty. I called in the heavy artillery. I washed them in hot water and dug around in the drawer behind the dental floss and found the tiny cloth that came with my glasses specifically for occasions like this. I polished them and put them on. Still blurry.

It was about then that I realized my contact lenses were still on.

But no, that is not the difference between youth and middle age. You see, I’ve always been a creature of habit. Or, rather, I’ve always been wildly inattentive to activities I do every day. So when I shuffle up the order by starting with the teeth, I forgot the first step – contact lens removal. I did this when I was 20 too.

No, the difference between youth and middle age is this: When I was twenty, I thought, “I’m a fucking idiot.” Now, at the ripe old age of 41, I think “My brain is clearly in a state of decay. I might as well give up completely.”

But today, inspired by Julia Child, whose autobiography I’m reading and who didn’t finish her Cordon Bleu training until she was 40 and went on to become an icon – maybe the icon – of American cooking, I will not give up! I have not yet begun to fight!

Unfortunately, I dozed off about halfway through the movie with my glasses sliding down my nose. I’ve got my work cut out for me.